Ground Truth: A nature immersion camp in the Texas Hill Country offers lessons on water conservation and environmental stewardship (Texas Architect)
At the end of a hot June day, down a dusty ranch road in the Hill Country, a bunch of sixth graders sprawl on picnic tables under the cavernous canopy of a grove of live oaks. The sun is sinking; the cicada chorus is rising; and after a day of conservation projects that included weaving ashe juniper branches into erosion controls above the creek, the kids are worn out. They would usually go for a swim, but this summer the swimming hole is low and full of green algae. “Nobody wants to be in it right now,” says a camp counselor. Instead, they’re writing songs. One is an ode to the mysteries of nature. Another, called “Van Feet,” is an ode to, well, summer camp.
Plugged In: In a time of climate disasters, libraries merge high-tech and very low-tech methods for supporting their communities (Texas Architect)
“People have this nostalgic view of libraries, like, I went there in third grade and checked out ‘Charlotte’s Web,”” says Dianne Connery, director of the Pottsboro Library. “And I love ‘Charlotte’s Web.’ But that’s not what’s happening here.” What’s happening in Pottsboro — a community of 2,600 or so, about a 90-minute drive north of Dallas on the Oklahoma border — is everything else (plus a book club). When the ice storm of 2021 hit, Pottsboro experienced the kind of cascading system failures that were hitting larger urban centers: no water, no electricity, limited communication. The library, housed in a small brick building near the center of town, became a kind of default operations center. “We don’t have a newspaper,” says Connery, “so the library Facebook page was already kind of a bulletin board for the community.” The library staff set up portable toilets. They contacted ranchers with working wells and organized those ranchers and their trucks to pump and deliver water to residents whose pipes had frozen. When FEMA offered a delivery of blankets, the agency didn’t know where to send them; the library stepped in to receive them and then signed up community members to receive intensive training from FEMA for disaster preparedness.
To pull off a sculptural green roof—and the 2,500-square-foot, off-grid-ready weekend getaway beneath it—it helps to have an international design firm at your disposal. Happily, this is the case for Louis Lemay, president of Montreal firm Lemay, and his partner, architect Stéfanie Roy. Lemay’s firm is known for large-scale commercial and civic projects with a "net-positive" approach centered on the well-being of users, environmental protection, and carbon reduction. The couple used their vacation home as an opportunity to collaborate with structural engineering firm Elema, builders Charpentes Montmorency and Constructions Pierre Ruel, and a multidisciplinary design team from Lemay to test this approach at a residential scale. (And yes, they put in a hot tub.)